CO2 Pollution Will Turn the Oceans Into Soda Water

I have seen, since I've lived here in Siargao (just 10 years now) the slow deterioration of the lagoon in front of us, with slimy green algae growing where none did before, shattered and bleached coral reefs, etc.

But I didn't know about this horror to come:

CO2 Pollution Could Erase Coral Reefs (from Wired Science)

It is truly a horrible prospect:
" While most of the attention on the impacts of carbon dioxide emissions has focused on its ability to act as a greenhouse gas, that warms the earth's climate, the changes CO2 emissions will bring to the world's oceans are receiving increasing attention. The more CO2 in the atmosphere, the more of it that dissolves into surface ocean water. That small chemistry change could cause huge changes in marine biology.

Marine organisms, like coral, that build skeletons out of calcium could find themselves unable to do so. If current emissions trends continue over the next decade, the world's marine creatures will be dealing with what's essentially an alien ocean. The last time ocean conditions like those predicted for mid-century existed was long before humans walked the earth".

Not only coral, but shellfish, would be affected. Imagine walking along a beach (if there are any after sea-level rises) and finding the only things washed up were plastic waste and greeny-brown scum, and no sea shells at all.

Amimintiks Can See Round Light & 100,000 Colours

Update: 9 July 2008.

Original post here.

I've just learned that my tasty crustacean doesn't have quite the fastest movement of any animal (some ant can snap its jaws faster) but it is the only animal known to see Circular Polarised Light.

The story (I missed it when it came out in March) is at the Wired Science blog.

If you want to know what Circular Polarised Light is, then look at a related news story by the same writer, Brandon Keim, at Wired Science, where this photo came from.

Next time I get some, I'll look 'em right in the eyes before I cook ém.

Amimintik - Mantis Shrimp

Greg Laden's Blog has a fascinating film about the truly amazing speed that these 'shrimps' move, which is quite unbelievable - they would have put Mohammed Ali in the shade.
It's a fascinating film. We have 'amimintiks' here in the Philippines - they're the spearing species shown in the film. They are extremely fast, and their grabbing arms are lined with needle-sharp spines - very sharp - you can't even handle one without getting pricked.
When you're snorkelling, you can hear them underwater - sharp reports from time to time - not all their efforts result in anything very much.


I featured them in a tale about Sunday afternoon reef foraging (right at the end):
and I can confirm that they are very tasty indeed - like lobsters but at 1/10the price. Here, they catch the spearers with sprung nooses set just above their sand holes. A bit of springy bamboo, a bit of string, and some fishy bait is all that is needed.



.

At some time in each month, some of them come loaded with 'coral' - eggs, that are the most tasty part. But, unlike lobsters, crabs, etc, that grow their eggs under their bellies, amimintiks grow theirs under the shell of their backs, so they have to moult to give birth.
There's a small local estuary here that no-one will dare cross, because although it is shallow enough, it is full of amimintiks, and they've been known to kill carabaos - the local domesticated water buffalo.

In the two photos above, you can see the creature in full size (about 10" long), and the truly awful structure of its grabbing claws.

But they are very tasty

Oh! What a Lovely Neighbour!

Would you rent a used seaside cottage from this man?

He is my friendly and cooperative neighbour., the owner of Patrick's-On-The-Beach, which surrounds me on three sides.

We haven't spoken to each other in over two years, ever since I went round to introduce myself, and he told me that he was just about to take over the quiet garden of the house I had just rented from Dado, demolish my thatched barn that I was about to use as a bead-craft sweatshop, and leave me with just the mere concrete shell of a house that goes with those two invaluable assets.

Next day, I used the back gate from my garden, for a swim. It leads about 10 metres through the cottages that Andreas rents from my landlord, Dado, to the sea. I was confronted by this fellow, who told me he was concerned about security for his 'resort' - Patrick's On The Beach, and unless I kept the gate padlocked, he would padlock it himself.
If he did, I said, I would effing cut off the effing padlock.
Next day, he marched up my garden to my bead works, where the girls were working away industriously, accompanied by the town's Chief of Police, and accused me of 'threatening' him.
Nothing came of that, of course; it was typical bluster.
But that summer, while I was away in Spain flogging beads to punters in the local markets, he reinforced the closure by boarding up 'his' side of the gate.

More on the lovely Andreas in later posts, including the intriguing tale of the source of the above smug self-portrait.

By the way, if you feel like you would like to donate to his orphanage scam, send a blank cheque to:

Messenger Of Joy Foundation
14721 S. Biscayne River Drive
Miami, FL 33168
Tel (305) 687-4107
Fax (305) 769-9924
andreas@mojf.org

Expensive Birds

I always knew there was one small tiny problem involved with keeping a pretty woman; decoration, maintenance and upkeep costs.
The town Fiesta is due on Friday, so there is a travelling fair of ukay-ukay stalls set up on the foreshore next to my neighbouring village of squatting fishermen, Mabua, between me and the creek. Ukay-ukay is basically second-hand clothes (yes - you know the ones you dutifully collect for the poor of the world? Well, they get bought up on arrival by Chinese traders, and farmed out to the local equivalent of Gypsies, who travel from town to town at fiesta time. They sell sheeting by the kilo, T shirts for 50p ($1),shorts for 100p, and so on.
On Monday night, I took Shedney out for our usual pub-crawl from Lalay's at the end of the Boulevard, to Nine Bar just up the road from me.
Only then did I notice that the short-short-shorts she was wearing had a broken zip, so when the tails of her shirt opened, everyone could see her her sweet little cotton-clad pussy.
So I blew up; just quietly exploded, thrust a 500p ($5) note into her hand and growled that she'd better get to the bulanon (ukay-ukay market) first thing in the morning, and get herself some new (and longer) shorts.

So what did the little minx do? She went straight up to Larry's Reef Break Shop (good website), where he has an enticing show of beachwear, and bought herself a grand new ensemble, plus a T-shirt and pair of short-short-shorts. The short-short-shorts have a hand-embroidered motto: "I AM A SIARGAO ISLAND SURF BITCH", and she blew the whole goddam' $5!

But she does look good in it, I must say.

And so thought Harry the Canadian Real Estate Millionaire, as he gazed, tongue lolling out, at that little area just below her collar bone.

Starting Out

This weblog will be an irregular notebook about my life (and occasional thoughts) on a small Pacific island, at the far right hand side of the Philippines. You can see what the place looks like at my website:
http://www.coconutstudio.com/GENERALLUNAfinX.htm

I change my obsessions with the seasons, and my current one is number systems in the Austronesian languages, of all things. I've been working on it for about four months now.

I thought, originally, that my findings would upset the entire current paradigm about the history of the people around me (the Austronesians), who managed to settle all the South East Asian islands, including the Philippines (where I live), Indonesia, and then went on to Easter Island, Hawaii, New Zealand, and west to Madagascar, just off the coast of East Africa.

Of course, I was wrong, but not all that wrong.

The Austronesian migrations were the widest spread of a distinctive human culture and anguage before the European expansions following the Age of Exploration in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The people who undertook this quite amazing migration share that culture and language with my island neighbours. Some of that culture is good; some very good, and some bad. (For a bit of the bad, see: http://www.coconutstudio.com/fishing%20expedition.htm).

I'll be writing a little about bits of that culture and language from time to time in this weblog. It will include random jottings that don't merit a full web page.